Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

It took me three years to get around to finishing this beast, and I'm glad to be able to cross it off of my list. I had read it many years ago in modern English, but my natural fastidiousness would not let me consider it done until I had read it in Middle English. And who would have known it would be such an undertaking? Anyway, I really don't have much to say about it, largely, I'm sure, because many of the niceties were stopped by immigration at the language border. In addition to that barrier is the fact that my personal taste does not seem to lie in Chaucer's line. Some of the tales were enjoyable enough--I was impressed by The Knight's Tale and The Franklin's Tale, and The Prioress' Tale actually brought me to tears--but the vast majority were either too stuffy or too crude to merit my endorsement. The fabliaux, especially, seemed beneath a poet of Chaucer's reputation. It should come as no surprise, however. Chaucer evidently "borrowed" much of his material from Boccaccio, for whose work I didn't care either.